http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/59523-obama-open-to-newspaper-bailout-bill?h
I know your first reaction (and by "your" I mean "ignorant fear-mongers on the internet's") is likely to be something along the lines of "OMG, not another bailout, it's communism, he's trying to take over the newspapers, we can't afford it, they deserve to fail, ect." And even the less hooting among us are likely to be at least a bit suspicious of yet another foray into giving money to failing industries. And we can say with either sadistic glee, or grave sensitivity, that the newspapers are dying the slow death of a sunset industry, a victim to the "whirlwind of creative destruction".
That said, this is likely to be one of the few really necessary bailouts. Are newspapers dying due to new media (web 2.0, blogs, et al)? Yes, of course. And are those new forms of media beating newspapers due to easier (and lower-cost) distribution, and by catering more to their audiences? Yes. Could newspapers compete with that? Possibly. Do we want them to? No.
This is one of many instances in which what "works" in the free-market economy is the opposite of what is best for the country at large.
The reason blogs and internet media can be cheaper is that they don't pay the cost of actual news-gathering. Pick your five favorite "new-media" sources, and I can almost categorically guarantee you that they're actually using old-media reporting as their information source. Bob's Blogland blog quotes from the New York Times wholecloth, adds a little blurb about how evil the corrupt government is, and gets the site hits, while the people who actually reported the story get not a dime.
But, that's not my concern (nor is it anyone's). There's no real way to stop that part. The real scary part is: what happens when the real news producers go out of business? When the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and even the AP Wire (not to mention CNN) have shuttered the windows and packed up, where do we get our news from? All that's left is the blogs. But do we really think Bernadette of the Bernadette blog, sitting in her pajamas in her living room with five cats and a freezer filled with Jenny Craig is going to actually go out and do investigative reporting?
We'll be back to the yellow papers, and everything will simply be tabloid crap. No fact-checking, no journalistic integrity, it'll just be people posting whatever they want, with no kind of body of rules to govern it. Are the newspapers perfect? No, but are they certainly better than a bunch of partisan hacks screaming at each other without any kind of objective monitor? God yes.
I know your first reaction (and by "your" I mean "ignorant fear-mongers on the internet's") is likely to be something along the lines of "OMG, not another bailout, it's communism, he's trying to take over the newspapers, we can't afford it, they deserve to fail, ect." And even the less hooting among us are likely to be at least a bit suspicious of yet another foray into giving money to failing industries. And we can say with either sadistic glee, or grave sensitivity, that the newspapers are dying the slow death of a sunset industry, a victim to the "whirlwind of creative destruction".
That said, this is likely to be one of the few really necessary bailouts. Are newspapers dying due to new media (web 2.0, blogs, et al)? Yes, of course. And are those new forms of media beating newspapers due to easier (and lower-cost) distribution, and by catering more to their audiences? Yes. Could newspapers compete with that? Possibly. Do we want them to? No.
This is one of many instances in which what "works" in the free-market economy is the opposite of what is best for the country at large.
The reason blogs and internet media can be cheaper is that they don't pay the cost of actual news-gathering. Pick your five favorite "new-media" sources, and I can almost categorically guarantee you that they're actually using old-media reporting as their information source. Bob's Blogland blog quotes from the New York Times wholecloth, adds a little blurb about how evil the corrupt government is, and gets the site hits, while the people who actually reported the story get not a dime.
But, that's not my concern (nor is it anyone's). There's no real way to stop that part. The real scary part is: what happens when the real news producers go out of business? When the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and even the AP Wire (not to mention CNN) have shuttered the windows and packed up, where do we get our news from? All that's left is the blogs. But do we really think Bernadette of the Bernadette blog, sitting in her pajamas in her living room with five cats and a freezer filled with Jenny Craig is going to actually go out and do investigative reporting?
We'll be back to the yellow papers, and everything will simply be tabloid crap. No fact-checking, no journalistic integrity, it'll just be people posting whatever they want, with no kind of body of rules to govern it. Are the newspapers perfect? No, but are they certainly better than a bunch of partisan hacks screaming at each other without any kind of objective monitor? God yes.